Saed HindashThe new Wizard of Oz machines are already a hit at Lucky Leo's arcade.

There is a chill in the air, a sense of longing and loss, as summer slips away on the Seaside boardwalk and up and down the Jersey Shore.

All the boys and girls of summer are pretty much gone, but our love of the surf and sand and sky is forever strong.

"This is depressing," Jim Bonham says of the sparse crowds on a Friday night. The Brick resident is perched on a stool at Jack and Bill's bar. "I don't like coming to this boardwalk and seeing zombies walking around."

The scorching hot weather kept crowds down in July, but the rest of the summer was livelier and profitable.

Whalen, whose dad, Leo, opened the arcade in 1953, installed 14 new air conditioners this year. Good move.

Whalen walks out on the floor to show off his four new "Wizard of Oz" machines like a proud arcade papa. They cost $55,000 each and are immensely popular. He talks to Mike Ciccone of Bayville, who wants to cash in 2 million points worth of tickets. The 23-year-old wants the set of 24 baseballs autographed by members of the Super Bowl champion Giants.

On the Shore's most frenetic boardwalk, though, it is a quiet night, almost eerily so, as if a good chunk of Jersey decided, why bother to head down to Exit 82, summer's over.

In the fluorescent-lit Maruca's Tomato Pies, where pizza boxes are stacked nearly to the ceiling, there are just three customers.

"There were days (in July) when we sat here talking to each other," says Joe Maruca, co-owner of the iconic pizzeria with his twin brother, Domenic.

Business was good otherwise, though. Maruca's, which opened on the Seaside Heights boardwalk in 1950 and is now located in Seaside Park, is one of the few boardwalk businesses open through the winter.

A real Jersey boardwalk never shuts down, it just dials things back a bit.

Saed HindashTwo Scouts from the Seaside Heights Camporee enjoy slices on the boardwalk.

Hundreds of tents have materialized on the sand this night; must be the annual Seaside Heights Camporee, with Boy Scouts from around the state spending the weekend camped out on the beach. Their troop leaders discourage video games, although cell phones are allowed.

"This is more entertaining than our other activities," says a smiling Daniel Duffy, a member of Troop 2, Jackson.

The Scouts will eat at stands like Three Brothers from Italy, which advertises "Pizza so good you'd sell your granny for a slice."

Granny's apparently worth about four bucks, which is a price of a plain slice.

Giant plastic lemonades hang from Midway Steak House; Kohr's bright white facade is a soft-serve beacon in the night. A plush pig nearly the size of a subcompact dangles from the front of a game of chance.

At the Bottle Bust game, one disappointed teen shakes his head. "Didn't I hit the bottle a bunch of times?" he asks.

You did, but it didn't break and that's all that counts.

Saed HindashPrizes at the games of chance come in all shapes and sizes.

Polina Racheva has another two weeks in Seaside, then it's back home to Bulgaria and the University of Economics in Varna.

"I'm happy and sad," she says. "I want to see my parents, but I had fun here. Every day I watch the ocean; I love the sky here."

A man in his 40s, cigarette in his mouth, walks by, coughing.

"I'm allergic to cigarettes," he rasps. "Yeah, that's it."

The lights are out at Rooftop Golf, once Wacky Golf, which seemed a much better name.

Dentato's Clam Bar, with the boardwalk's best sausage sandwiches, is shut down, at least tonight.

The show by the same name, thankfully, is gone. There are still reminders. The Walkin' Charlie break-the-plate game features possibly the strangest collection of targets anywhere: Michael Jackson, the Joker, a Boston Red Sox player, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Situation and Snooki.

The latter somehow looks worse than the real version, with knock knees and hair that looks like a bucket of pitch had been dumped on it.

Saed HindashOne last chance to win valuable - or not-so-valuable - prizes at a pop-the-balloon game.

It's 10 p.m. on the Shore's liveliest, loudest and most licentious boardwalk.